Research about Naxatras III offered us a great opportunity to get a lot of details about various aspects of a production of this kind. We asked Jesus Agnew to give us as much information as possible about the project and the result is what follows.
The main factor in any recording is, of course, the musicians themselves. Ultimately, they determine the sound identity of the project, and their relation to the whole process is all but insignificant. Based on my limited experience, founded mainly on talking with sound engineers and people professionally related to music production, most of the time musicians choose to snub the technical side of the recording, sometimes even -inadvertently- hobble the process. However, with Naxatras this is not the case, at all.
Jesus describes them:
”Naxatras, as a group of musicians, are exceptionally well-suited to analog live recording techniques, which have unfortunately faded out of vogue in recent years with the vast majority of record producers and artists preferring the safer path of digital multitrack recording, with its infinite editing capabilities and the freedom to record each instrument individually and piece together a demanding performance note by note, if the performer proves to not be up to the task. The magic disappears, but the performances can be made to appear flawless.”

"However, Naxatras are incredible on stage. Not only can they deliver a technically accurate performance, but there are so much passion and magic to it that if this were not to be captured in a recording, there wouldn't be much point in doing it."

"Realizing this from the very start, they have chosen the path of an analog recording of real performances in one go, with all musicians playing together as if it would be in front of an audience."

"The magic of the moment is such an essential ingredient to their music, that most of their songs are, indeed, recorded in a single take. It is far more common for musicians to record several takes of the same piece, and later choose which one they consider best, to make it to the final album release. But, Naxatras find that repetition causes fatigue and the magic is gone after the first or second take. They don't try to play it safe. They improvise, try out new ideas with no warning, and only ever keep a single take of each piece. In the rare occasions where a second take was needed, it was recorded over the first one, so there was no going back."

”All their albums to date follow this approach. Their debut album was recorded straight to a stereophonic cassette tape deck running at 3.75 ips. Their second album was recorded straight to a stereophonic 1/4-inch tape machine, running at 15 ips, and so was their EP and a few singles. There was even a direct-to-disk recording session, where the sound was directly cut into grooves on a record.
Their third album, stoically titled III, was yet another recording on 1/4-inch tape, using exclusively analog equipment. In many ways, however, it is different from all their previous work. They spent a lot longer in the studio than any other time, not performing their songs, but simply fine-tuning their sound. They arrived with vastly upgraded equipment. This method of minimalist analog recording is very good at capturing and preserving the sound that was there in the room. It is not good at hiding flaws or making things appear better than they were. It is a very honest process.
As such, the quality of the equipment will ultimately determine the overall sound of the recording.
The virtuosity of the musicians, the compositions, and the effectiveness of the arrangement will define the musical quality of the album. Nothing can be added or corrected later. What you hear is exactly how Naxatras performed in 2017 and the quality of the instruments they used at the time.”

J. I. Agnew describes his involvement with cutting records:
"I am actively involved in the development, repair and restoration of disk mastering lathes for some of the finest mastering facilities around the world, so I have personally put together all the equipment I use for this purpose. I have machined many of the mechanical parts myself on special high precision machine tools, I have designed and built most of the electronics, including an ultra-high-end cutting amplifier system recently presented in a paper, published by the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, and have optimized everything for the highest achievable performance and accuracy, through the use of a minimalist, all-analog signal path, consisting of components of exceptional quality and tight tolerances."

What were the main objectives for mastering?
"The aim was, as always, to conduct the tape-to-disk transfer with the least amount of deviation from the intended sound of the source, which in this case is the master tape. The disk mastering system used, is designed to be as transparent as possible, preserving absolute polarity, dynamics, and phase response. However, in any type of recording and subsequent reproduction, there will always be some unintended change to the sound. The "Massive Passive" equalizer (ed.: you can read more details about the equipment used during the production in the relevant page) was used to compensate for such unintended changes, "tuning out" the deviations in an almost surgical manner, to ensure maximum possible fidelity.

When I was satisfied that the test cuts are as true to the source as possible, I proceeded with cutting the masters. Each master disk is inscribed by hand with the catalog number and side letter, along with the signature of the mastering engineer and perhaps a little secret message! Six master disks were needed for that since the masters are single-sided."

What are the main technical requirements when making a disc?
”The release was a triple LP. The decision was made to keep sides short in duration, to have more freedom to decide on cutting parameters for the best results sonically, without undue space restrictions. The longer the side, the less space you have available on the disk surface, so material with intense dynamics and extended low frequencies cannot fit at the desired level. If the level is reduced, the dynamic range is decreased. One could also just remove the low frequencies to make it fit, but we are talking about high fidelity here. If you can live without low frequencies and with a poor dynamic range, then you don't need vinyl records. The album is also available as mp3 downloads if you don't care about sound quality. The less space you have available, the shallower you have to make the grooves. But if you have high expectations, the deeper the groove (up to a certain reasonable point), the larger the contact area with line-contact type reproduction styli, effectively lowering the noise caused by the molecular structure of the PVC compound used to press the records, due to an "averaging" effect which prevents the reproducing stylus from tracing PVC molecules as sound. It always does, to some extent, which is the noise floor of the disk medium.”

"Another benefit of keeping side duration short is that the records could be cut at a fixed pitch. Most records since the 1960s are cut at an automatically variable pitch, which is an automation system, varying the spacing between the grooves and the groove depth during the cut, automatically, based on the dynamics of the music. More space is needed for the louder passages and less space for the quiet parts, so this system saves space on the disk surface to make it easier to cut longer sides. However, the variation in groove spacing and depth can upset the tonearm/cartridge equilibrium during reproduction and change the background noise characteristics, or even worse, result in noise modulation and phase modulation of the recorded signal.
Fixed pitch maintains the same groove spacing and depth throughout the side. The only downside is that it limits the side duration. But if the side duration is intentionally limited and the automatically variable pitch system of the disk mastering lathe can be bypassed, we can cut records with even fewer side effects affecting the sound!”

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